Three young researchers studied the Bargello Museum's collection of Renaissance bronzes

A preview presentation was made this morning at the Bargello National Museum of the results of the research carried out on the museum’s Renaissance bronze statuary by the three Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa research fellows Davide Civettini, Marco Scansani and Teresa Bruni, winners of as many two-year research grants (2020-2022) within the AnaGBar project: Anatomy of the great art bronzes: material, technical and conservation investigations on the metal statuary of the Bargello National Museum in Florence, promoted and funded by the Region of Tuscany, the Bargello Museums together with the Friends of the Bargello and the non-profit Il Bargello Foundation.

During the meeting titled Renaissance Bronzetti del Bargello: research in preview. The results of the AnaGBar 2020-2022 project, Davide Civettini presented the talk I Bronzetti rinascimentali del Bargello: collecting and historical-critical approaches, in which he examined the uniqueness of the Bargello’s collection of small bronzes, which not only offers the rare possibility of reconstructing the provenance of some pieces up to very early dates, that is, up to the sixteenth century, shortly after their casting, but also stands out because of the typological variety and the enormous quantity of objects that compose it (more than seven hundred). Marco Scansani then offered the audience the results of his research From the Ancient: Inspirations, Copies and Assemblages, which confirms the indissoluble link between Renaissance bronzes and those of antiquity. Through three case studies, selected from among the objects in the catalog, Scansani highlighted the relationships, real or presumed, established or unpublished, between ancient models and modern inventions. Finally, Teresa Bruni, a specialist in scientific diagnostics on works of art, addressed theAnatomy of a group of bronze statuettes preserved at the Bargello Museum, expounding on the investigative techniques employed in order to acquire information on the making technique and the surfaces of the approximately one hundred and sixty bronze statuettes being researched. Microscopy, video-endoscopy, ultrasonic surveys, thermography, UV reflectography, FT-IR spectroscopy, and 3D scanning are the tools used to study the objects in the filing.

“It was fundamental for the Bargello Museums to be part of the Regione Toscana’s Giovani sì project, which by bringing together different institutions, all of which I thank for their generosity, made it possible to host at the Bargello National Museum three young researchers who studied the Renaissance bronze collection, the most important in the world,” said Paola D’Agostino, director of the Bargello Museums. “The collaboration with the Scuola Normale Superiore, with Professor Francesco Caglioti, coordinator of the project, and Professor Fabio Beltram, director of the Nest (National entreprise for nano science and technologies) laboratory of the Scuola, has fostered interdisciplinary research and daily confrontation between the three researchers of different backgrounds and the staff of the Bargello National Museum. For more than a year, in fact, a mobile diagnostic investigation laboratory was set up inside the museum, first in the bronze room and then at the medagliere, which allowed for an intense and daily study of the works from different points of view. This contamination of knowledge has finally given concrete start to the scientific cataloguing of this most precious collection.”

“The Fondazione Il Bargello Onlus has been close to the activities of the Museum since 1982, the year in which the Associazione Amici del Bargello was founded, which became a Foundation in 2015. Throughout these years, first the Association and then the Foundation have funded studies and research on individual works of the Museum, their cataloguing and general aspects of museum activities,” commented the president of the non-profit Il Bargello Foundation, Sergio Chiostri. “Special attention has been given to fostering the commitment of young scholars, in whose knowledge lies the future of the Museum’s activities and of the knowledge of the wonderful collections that can be admired while walking through the halls of this imposing building. It is in this vein, therefore, that the co-financing for the study grants on bronze statues, whose winners and the results of their studies are being celebrated today. I greatly congratulate and encourage them to continue on the path they have chosen, which will broaden the knowledge of all lovers of these works of art.”

“To all three researchers,” added Dimitrios Zikos, president of the Friends of the Bargello, “goes my thanks for sharing this experience with me by allowing me to be beside them as they examined the pieces to be catalogued. Thanks to the unrepeatable opportunity to study the originals very closely, these scholars have acquired skills that transcend the generic and repetitive art-historical knowledge, and reading the cards they produced confirms the maturity of their approach. Skills that are all the more valuable when one considers that there is no living or working scholar in the field who deals with them. I urge them not to abandon the path they have taken to one day give us contributions and long overdue monographs worth reading.”

“The Bargello collections include a very large number of bronze sculptures, almost a thousand. There was a partial cataloging of these bronzes and it was therefore extremely important that a scientifically thorough sweep was conducted, a cataloging made possible thanks to the PRIN 2017 project,” explained Ilaria Ciseri of the Bargello National Museum. "The aim of the AnaGBar project (2020-2022) was therefore to integrate with this pool of exceptional resources and funding the cataloging of the core of bronzes already started previously with the PRIN project, and it had the added value of being able to place alongside the cataloging the scientific research, conducted with great zeal by Teresa Bruni, who together with Davide Civettini and Marco Scansani took turns in the micro-laboratory of investigation set up in the Hall of the Bronzetti of the Bargello National Museum. The result is an excellent work, because in addition to the in-depth study from an art historical point of view, it was possible to retrace the history of these small bronzes, which over the centuries had furnished the Uffizi Gallery, the Medici Villas, Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, and which were not only collectibles but in some cases also highly refined objects of use such as inkwells, oil lamps, candlesticks and even fireplace lighters."

“AnaGBar was an important occasion of close and fruitful scientific collaboration in the field of art history between a university institution and a museum institution,” concluded Francesco Caglioti, professor of medieval art history at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. "For this collaborative formula, which is very rare if not unheard of until a few years ago in Italy, we are grateful to the Region of Tuscany, which in 2019 promoted several calls to this effect, and then of course to the Normale and the Bargello (the latter with the Il Bargello Foundation and the Friends of the Bargello), who specifically believed in AnaGBar, co-funding it. Moreover, I like to point out that the institutional understanding between the Bargello and the university world could count on a precedent in a PRIN 2015 (in fact 2017) for the Museum’s catalog, of which I was a promoter in agreement with its direction (Paola D’Agostino, Ilaria Ciseri). The relevant specificity of AnaGBar lies in the opportunity it offered to the Normale itself for an unusual interpenetration between the Humanities Class, in its art-historical soul, and the Sciences Class, represented by NEST and its director, my colleague Fabio Beltram. From the latter came the decisive contributions so that a part of the Bargello catalog, the one dedicated to small bronzes, could be enhanced through advanced diagnostics, which we hope will serve as a model and inspiration to other similar initiatives."

Three young researchers studied the Bargello Museum's collection of Renaissance bronzes

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